Cultural Anthropology: Unit 2

Race

A flawed system of classification, with no biological basis, that uses certain physical characteristics to divide the human population into supposedly discrete groups.

Racial Hierarchy

A social system where groups are ranked based on perceived differences in a way that reinforces systemic racism and unequal access to power

Cultural Capital

The non-financial social assets like knowledge, skills, education, and tastes that can give individuals an advantage and promote social mobility.

Institutional Racism

Patterns by which racial inequality is structured through key cultural institutions, policies, and systems.

Intersectionality

An analytic framework for assessing how factors such as race, gender, and class interact to shape individual life chances and societal patterns of stratification.

Microaggressions

Common, everyday verbal or behavioral indignities and slights that communicate hostile, derogatory, and negative messages about someone’s race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion.

Sex

The culturally agreed upon physical differences between male and female, especially biological differences related to human reproduction.

Gender Stereotypes

Widely held and powerful, preconceived notions about the attributes of, differences between, and proper roles for women and men in a culture.

Racism

Individuals’ thoughts and actions and institutional patterns and policies that create or reproduce unequal access to power, privilege, resources, and opportunities based on imagined differences among groups.

Class

A system of power based on wealth, income, and status that creates an unequal distribution of a society’s resources.

White Priviledge

The unearned benefits and advantages that accrue to individuals simply by being categorized as white.

Gender Preformance

The way gender identity is expressed through action.

Sexuality

The complex range of desires, beliefs, and behaviors that are related to erotic physical contact, and the cultural arena within which people debate what kinds of physical desires and behaviors are right, appropriate, and natural.

Gender Ideologies

A set of cultural ideas, usually stereotypical, about the essential character of different genders that functions to promote and justify gender stratification.

Language

A system of communication organized by rules that uses symbols such as words, sounds, and gestures to convey information.

Language Ideologies

Beliefs and conceptions about language that often serve to rationalize and justify patterns of stratification and inequality.

Language

The Egg & The Sperm

Race

Why race isn’t biological

Gender, Sex, & Sexuality

Olympics, Muxes

Class

People Like Us Documentary

Intersectionality

An analytical framework for understanding how different factors like race, gender, and class interact to shape individual experiences and societal stratification